‘My mother unwound the billboard scraps that she’d swaddled me in. Fleet flattened her ears and hissed, threatening the synod, and they smiled their black smiles and spread their hands and stepped away.
‘My mother held me by the ankle, her all-too-human child, and she stared her defiance at the cranes on the horizon as she lowered me into the pool.
‘And then what, you ask? What do you think? Then I
changed
. I took on those aspects of the city the synod had hoarded. My sweat became petrol to keep me warm on the coldest night. I could flow as silently and as fast as shadows. My wounds would close as fast as oil over a stone.
‘And their part of the deal given, the Chemical Synod demanded their payment.
‘Gutterglass found me, the way she always has. Her pigeons spotted the baby lying in the marshes and bore her to me. Fleet was still hissing and yowling to keep the synod at bay. Glas always says I wasn’t crying, just staring up at the clouds, giggling, drunk on the fumes. I wasn’t even aware my Mother had gone.
‘No one but the synod knows what was demanded, but whatever the price was, Mater Viae didn’t have it. That’s why she went, had to be: she had to go hunting for it. That’s why she disappeared.
‘Not long after, Fleet vanished too, following her, and from that day to this, from Shepherd’s Bush to Cripplegate neither Mater Viae nor her Cats have been seen.
‘And now she’s coming back – who knows why? Perhaps she’s completed the task the synod gave her, retrieved whatever rare commodity they need for their next experiment in mortal chemistry.
‘But still, she’s been gone a long time. And sometimes I catch Glas’ reflection in a window-pane, when she thinks I can’t see, and her face … Well, I can’t help but wonder if she thinks that I cost her a Goddess, for all those years at least.
‘So that’s where we’re going, Beth, if you’re willing: out to the chemical marshes, to put petrol in your sweat and steel in your bones. We’re going diving for a new you amidst the opium and tea and the old bloody brick. I asked you to give up home, give up safety, and you did, and I’m
grateful. Now I need you to give up this one more thing. It’s double or quits, Beth – I just hope it’s not sudden death.
‘Do you really want to be like me?’
Docklands: the eastest of the East End, where the dense tangle of office blocks and high-rise flats peters out, diminishing into miles of low concrete with a few desultory parks and stagnant ponds full of water.
The City’s three tallest skyscrapers rise hundreds of feet above the squalor, with the lesser towers, each a glittering palace of law or finance, clustering around them on a small island in the docks. Canary Wharf is like a mask, a false-face, shouting that all in the East End is prosperous. But in the shadow of the towers the warehouses groan empty, and haggard-looking regulars have almost grown into their seats in the chilly pubs.
Do you really want to be like me?
The two of them stood on the riverbank, in front of the old dye factory. Beth’s brain buzzed. She looked Fil now and saw her future.
He avoided her gaze, and Beth’s heart tightened in her chest.
Give up home
.
Give up safety
.
I need you to give up one more thing …
A sound made her look towards the factory. Six completely black figures slipped away from the rusting hulk and strode towards them across the marshes, seagulls wheeling around them. The midday sun shrivelled pools of shadow to nothing.
The men’s oil-slicked faces had a rainbow sheen. Their lips made faint sucking noises as they parted for breath.
Click click click
went the cigarette lighters – each of them had one, and they snapped them open and shut as they walked, open and shut,
open and shut—
Their acrid stench cut through Beth’s sinuses like sandpaper and tears stung her eyes. Fil had told her about their appearance, the smell, even the lighters. The one thing she hadn’t expected was the
symmetry
.
They tilted their heads and smiled their black smiles identically. When one of them raised his right hand in greeting, another on the far side raised his left. They spread across the marshes like ripples on a pool of oil, graceful as dancers in their pitch-black tailoring.
Fil leaned on his spear and watched their display, his attitude all show-off cocky, but Beth saw his jaw clench. Maybe he wasn’t afraid, she told herself; maybe he was only fighting the smell.
The tallest of the Chemical Synod stepped forward from
the centre and the others stepped back and out in precise formation.
‘Johnny Naphtha.’ Fil’s smile was tighter than a violin string.
‘Filiuss Viae,’ the oil-soaked man acknowledged. His deep voice was smooth, pleasant. ‘The Sson of the Sstreetss. Pipssqueak of the Pavementss. Visseroy of the Viaductss. Sswame of the Ssidewalkss. Malingerer of the M25—’
Fil sighed and interrupted. ‘Could you possibly stop taking the piss, Johnny?’
‘Sstunned that you would ssuggesst I would commit ssuch ssacrilege, Filiuss.’ Johnny turned to Beth and the synod bowed to her in unison. Oil dripped from their foreheads to splash on the pebbles. ‘And who is this Kissmet-kisssed courtessan who iss kind enough to accompany your Highnessss?’
‘I am not,’ Beth said flatly, ‘a bleedin’
courtesan
.’
Fil’s brow wrinkled. ‘A what?’
‘It’s a nice word for a hooker,’ said Beth, who’d learned it from Pen.
‘Sso ssorry, a ssimple ssemantic sslip.’ Johnny inclined his head. ‘A conssort, then.’
‘Not one of them neither.’
‘Ah.’ Johnny Naphtha’s smile widened, and a strange thought occurred to Beth, that that smile was indestructible, that you could put Johnny Naphtha through a car-crusher and his grin alone would come out whole on the other side.
‘I’d certainly ssooner commit ssuicide than distress such a ssoul further,’ he said smoothly. He gestured back towards the dye factory. ‘So pleasse, come insside.’
The door of the dye factory led through to metal-walled cloisters covered in oceans of rust and continents of dead brown moss. The Chemical Synod formed up around Beth as they walked, wrapping her in dizzying fumes. The snap of the lighters filled her with a thrilling premonition of fire. She was beginning to feel light-headed, and she snarled inwardly at herself to stay alert.
Johnny Naphtha and Filius Viae loped side-by-side up ahead, apparently haggling over the price of her transformation. Johnny Naphtha bent his head, listening closely while Fil described what he wanted.
Beth studied his sinewy back, noting the oily sweat that slicked it, the way his sharp shoulder blades protruded. Then his shoulders slumped and he gestured once, as though protesting, but his heart didn’t seem to be in it.
Johnny Naphtha produced a clear bottle from inside his jacket and Fil resentfully took a long swig—
Or that’s what it looked like, but the level of the liquid in the bottle didn’t go down; instead it changed colour, grew darker. Fil handed the bottle back to Johnny Naphtha, who snatched it from his reluctant fingers and slipped it back into his coat.
‘
Do you really want to be like me?
’ he’d asked her. And there was only one answer: to be like him, to understand this
place the way he did; to
belong
to the city, the way he did. The idea stole away her breath and sealed it in a secret place under her heart.
‘That’s
disgusting
,’ said Beth. The famous pool was thick with oily filth and fringed with blackened grass. A chain-link fence surrounded it, and a rust-eaten sign warned interlopers:
BEWARE RUDER ARM
Some joker had graffiti’d in an arm in black, making the rudest sign they could think of. The synod’s members stood around the perimeter, snapping their lighters.
Fil faced Beth across the water. ‘What is?’
‘
That
,’ she said, pointing at the pool. ‘It’s
filthy
.’
‘It is?’ He sounded surprised.
‘Look how polluted it is—’
He looked incredulous. ‘Of
course
it’s polluted! What – did you think you could pick up powers like I’ve got by swimming in
clean
water? You might as well go home and take a bloody bath!’
‘The day I take bathing advice from you,
petrol-sweat
,’ she countered, ‘is the day I kill myself.’ Her reflection wavered dimly on the oily surface. She could make out the outline of her head, but the face set into it was a blank.
‘So,’ she said. Her voice was steady, but her heart was hammering.
‘So,’ he replied.
‘Better get on with it, I guess.’
‘I guess.’
‘Just wasting time here.’
‘Yep.’
‘No going back now.’
The synod symmetrically shook their heads, and Beth felt a jolt in her chest. It was like hearing a heavy door slam behind you in a dark house.
She sat down on the bank of the pool, kicked off her trainers and pulled off her socks. Oily black mud chilled the skin between her toes. Tentatively she stuck one foot into the filthy water—
‘Ow!’ she cried, and yanked it back. The skin had blistered red. She looked up at Fil.
‘I did tell you it could hurt.’
‘
Right
,’ she muttered under her breath and stood up. She poised herself on the dead grass at the edge and bent like a diver, ready to get in. If she plunged in as fast as possible, she figured, she’d at least get the shock over with.
The blood thundered in her ears like trains, like traffic, like hollow pipes in the basements of tower blocks, like tides of the river itself.
Do you really want to be like me?
She tensed her muscles.
‘Beth,’ Fil said. ‘I’m proud—’
She dived.
Beth involuntarily screwed up her eyes and clamped her mouth shut. She exhaled hard through her nose as the thick meniscus of the pool slid over her face. Then the water swallowed her.
Liquid rushed into her ears, roared in, drowning out her heartbeat. She felt her T-shirt billowing as the water covered her stomach, prickling it like insect feet. Blisters erupted on her neck, inside her ears, between her fingers, stinging her lips.
Don’t breathe in, don’t breathe in.
She pushed more breath out of her nostrils. She couldn’t imagine the pain of having the toxins flood her sinuses, but the pressure built up steadily in her chest. She held her mouth shut.
Don’t breathe. Don’t breathe. Don’t panic.
When you have to tell yourself that
, a voice in her head countered dryly,
you’re already screwed
.
The water savaged her skin. She could feel warm blood pouring out through her pores.
The pressure grew as the liquid squeezed her until every beat of her pulse felt fit to crack open her head. There was a vacuum in her chest like a black hole. The water seeped into the corners of her mouth, burning her gums, making her teeth fizz horribly in her mouth. It levered at her jaw, straining to be let in.
Don’t breathe. Don’t breathe. Don’t panic.
The breath died from her nostrils. The bubbles rippling over her face ceased.
Breathe. Breathe. Don’t panic
.
I watch as she goes limp, spread out in the water like a black star. It would be a lie to say I’d thought this was without risk. We both knew this could kill her, and as good as she was at hiding it, Beth was horribly afraid of her death.
So was I.
I want to dive in after her, but instead I bite my lip and taste the petrol. This is a war, and that makes us soldiers – and what kind of soldier backs out because a friend of his might get hurt? It’s a fifty-fifty shot, better than Reach would give her. ‘This is my fight now,’ she said, and I will myself to respect that.
Six shadows fall across the water and I look up sharply. The synod have stepped in, buttoning their jackets in identical time. They bend over the pool like the petals of a black flower. Too late, I notice the absence of sound. They aren’t snapping their lighters. Beth is still and they are still and there is an all-swallowing silence.
Each holds a flame in their outstretched hands. As one, they turn and grin at me.
‘Johnny!’ I shriek—
—and six flames fall towards the petrol-slicked water.
Dimly Beth heard the
whumphh
as the fire blossomed above her. Even without opening her eyes she knew what must have happened; now the surface of the pool was capped in flame. No way back out. At first the liquid ameliorated the heat, rendered it to warmth, but as she hung there she felt the pool heat up around her. Her skin began to hurt less; perhaps the nerve endings were burning out, perhaps she was dying. The beat of the blood in her head was the loudest thing. The loudest thing she could ever dream …
Pressure in her temples obliterated the thought. A slow current tugged at her and she allowed herself to turn, rolling in the water like a crocodile.
The pressure battered furiously, unbearably, at her throat and chest and jaw. She realised with sadness, rather than fear, that she was going to open her mouth and let the poisoned water enter her. She was too weak for this test and it would kill her.
The light of the fire touched her eyelids. And because she didn’t want to die blind, she opened them.
‘Johnny! Let me— Beth!
Beth!
’
But the Chemical Synod hold me, woven in a symmetrical
web of their arms. Their skins are too slippery for me to pull them off, but their grip on me is vice-like.
‘BETH!
BETH!
’ I scream at the top of my voice. ‘Let me go!’ But they grin their horrid grins and hold me tighter. I’m panicking now, and I don’t understand. We had a
deal
. Deals are sacred!
In my pain and confusion, I barely register the change in the water, but then I notice the flames flickering, reflected in the surface – the surface which is no longer oily black.
It has turned silver.